I think 8-4 would be viewed as alright but kind of a little letdown with the Richardson expectations. Only 2 teams will have more recruited talent than us for sure and on paper this year looks to have better potential than 2023 possibly.
Fever,
Using my heart & my Orange & Blue glasses, I see your point & hope you are right !
Using my head & the thoughts of Chris Doerning & others, I'm not so sure. Negative thoughts drift through my head -
"...Only 2 teams (TAMU & UGA ?) will have more recruited talent than us for sure."
I see nothing that proves that statement. You can be like Insta & post all the meaningless statistics you want about how our recruiting classes were rated.
If recruiting rankings are a guarantee of success, then why did we lose 7 games ? - including UCF ?
Our recruiting rankings were better so why were we were 2-6 in the SEC; why did KY, LSU, & SCar beat us last year ?
I don't see anything that
PROVES we have more talent than any of these teams (Utah, KY, LSU, SCar or Tenn).
Do we have a capable OL for the 1st time in years ? Do we have the necessary RBs ?
Richardson has physical ability - if he stays healthy, but is he mature enough to grasp the mental aspects of playing QB ? Can he manage a game successfully start to finish. He has yet to prove that to me. If he goes down, we are screwed !
Grantham is finally gone & hopefully no more thrown shoes & players line up correctly, etc, but do we have a 2nd
PROVEN DT ? If so, what's his name ?
Since two people can't play every snap, do we have any depth ? Many question marks we don't know the answer to.
Obviously pre-season rankings / ratings don't mean much. But we have an even chance of losing 3 of our 1st 4 games - Utah, KY, & Tenn.
Realize this is the talking season & hoping for the best at this time of year costs nothing - BUT
I have been attending games in the Swamp since the mid-sixties; I have memorized our famous battle cry of
"wait till next year !" (I'm from Jax); getting fired up in pre-season & than crashing & burning is painful. Napier has never coached an SEC game; much less won one.
Maybe we should hold off on all these great prediction until we play our 1st four games.